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Starting to feel a bit better this morning. still all the signs that im sick, at least now i can make myself look respectable, yesterday i looked like death warmed up.

Ive started packing everything up in preperation for comming home, I’ve enjoyed my time here and it should prove usfull.

Missing the hell out of Sarah and the kids a message from them this morning just impacted the fact.

Back to the topic of backpacking. I dont know if its something you would seriously do.. as a single person i imagine it would get boring, as a couple i think it would be a great test of the strength of the relationship.

Hoping to catch up with Jared whilst im up here, but after working it out, i would need to leave ipstar at 2 maybe 3 pm to make it to his office, look around and then catch a cab into the airport.

I expect the trip back to melbourne to be an uneventful one, taxi to sydney airport, plane to melbourne, bus to southern cross, train to mitcham and walking home.

I could possibly do it via public transport but then i need to figure out all the timing / changes

anyway sounds like Tao is finished in the shower, better get a move on!

a quick explination here.
Im up in sydney on training from one of my providers.

I flew up sunday night and got in about 10:00, monday I have been in training all day.
I have had tonight to myself and the below is a no holds barred thaughts as they come out of my head (i havent even re-read it)
im guessing this would make for a more interesting read.
this was written in a little pub after walking half the city (train from apartment to “town hall station” to sydney habour (circular quay) and taking in the awesomness of everything on the way
ill post some pics i tool on the phone when i get them off it.

I just cant get over the size of this city.
I walked for an hour and only managed to get from the middle to the harbour
the public transport here is amazing, most of the traffic is taxis, or busses. all of the trains are double deckers and everyone seems so happy to help
i actually ran into some tourists that where asking me for directions, and i knew where to send them.
artamon (where i am staying) is north of sydney so i had to catch a train over the bridge the sight was awesome.

the views are just amazing. everything new. being lost. the feelign is fantastic.

standing at the wharf for the ferries the felling to just throw everything i was carrying in, forget work and go backpacking with sarah. im sure the kids would be fine for a year with dad.

this city holds some of the nicest places in areas you would never think. i found an internet cafe / cafe in the basement of a maccas. a quiet pub still serving counter meals at 8:30 at night with an atmosphere that demands a $30+ price tag (mind you the best gnocci of my life and a burbon an coke was only 18 bux), no riff raff here.
i regret not bringing the camera, even the little one. as my phone went flat before i got to the harbour.
this is something i defainatly want to do again, just a few days. no car. no plans. no kids, just sez and I and a small wad of cash.

I feel guilty now sitting here typing out my thaughts not having sez nd the kids here. i know that sarah is loosing her mind

its easy to pick a local. their going a million miles an hour. tourists are so relaxed its embarrising. traffic up here can only be decribed as “Violent” even in the suburbs there is no hesitation to blast horns if you so much as need to slow down, cars belting it flat out in side streets (not p platers) it rediclious! the feeling your going to be flattened constantly everything!!

the staff at IPA are also heaps different than what i expected. the office is in a state of dissaray and so relaxed its not funny, Adam is nothing ike i expected I was expected a suit and tie affair like Phil, yet hes very scruffy and quite happy to talk the techie talk.

as i eat and type I realise my phone is flat and no-one can call me. the guys will be wondering where i am. i make a decision to stop bashing out my thaughts and trying to understand rugby (you hve to be on the ground to make a try?? what?) and start heading back to “collage heaven”. maybe i can keep going there…

I am supposed to catch up with an old work collegue whilst im up here but the timing for the plane worries me.

— leaving the bar

i left the bar and jumped on the train. the network here is so simple to understand.. complex as hel, bu if you take 5 and look at the map for a few minutes it makes perfect sense.

i took a train back over the bridge, Everything was lit up like its christmas.. another awesome sight,i cant think of much mre, my brai has gone amush

the one thing i almost fell over laughing about… try seeing four cops packed into a lancer, followed by a cop car rodeo.. somethings not right.

for those that still visit here, everything will be getting pulled over the next few days/weeks whilst i got for a full rebuild.

Site maybe down for quite some time.

I have been experiencing issues was my car’s wiring of late, causing a random losses of power, this was found to be an issue with the engine and harness, I sourced a new wiring harness from wreckers unfortunately when fitting is harness I found that there was a different configuration after returning it to the wreckers Jason was nice enough to give me a $75.00 credit it attempted to obtain a manual wiring harness over the next two weeks however was unsuccessful on Thursday I picked up another auto wiring harness in an attempt to convert it to Manual harness however today after probing all the wires in both harnesses I found that the almost none of the wires match and will all need to be rewired
I’ll be posting out details of the modification shortly however I do need to test it on my vehicle before i blow up anyone elses
Last weekend I changed the oil, the spark plugs, the leads and cleaned up the DFI module hopefully with the new harness this will return my car to its former Glory

i also tried out the voice regonition features of vista writing this post. not too bad. needs some training tho

It looks like I’ve lost the second of my two Blaupunkt overdrive 10 inch subs, maybe time to see if i can get my hands on some Velocity Gold 15′s again or a Burning Desire II, unfortunatly I was stpuid enough to pass up the opertunity to get one for 1500 bucks when i was working at Expert.

Im also in the process of organising all my debts, when i fell behind from the car accedent has finaly caught up with me.

Well I decided to spoil sez for her 21st this year (like she has a 21st every year..) any way we had just recently cleaned out the garage, During this massive cleanup I came up with the best idea, Sarah has a nice RED SV5000 kit sitting around that she always wanted to put on her new VN, I knew painting a body kit was not something to undertake lightly, So i spent a week researching painting methods and preperation steps.

Trying to keep this from sarah was actually quite difficult (especialy seeing I cant organise my way out of a paper bag) But i managed to organise a Spray Gun, compressor someones place to spray it and even get it there without her noticing. Thee hardest part was trying to get a paint sample, Simple, take the fuel cap! But when Sez wont even let me near the car let alone the keys I had to credit card the damn thing off, unfortunatly every time I got the fuel cap open Sarah would turn up trying to figure out what I was doing (I’m sure at one stage she thought I was trying to steal petrol from her) Anyway I managed to get Paint and supplies without Sarah knowing (even tho she comes with me everywhere) Unfortunatly the place I had organised to spary the Kit was no-longer available, so I decided to show sez the Paint and supplies as a B/day gift incase the Kit wasnt ready (at this stage im still pushing it), after a lot of “appreication” we organised a trailer and took the kit to my Uncle’s.

After grinding up the insides of the damaged parts with a angle grinder we set to patching the fiber glass, fiber filling the large holes and Bogging up the large scratches (And using ACID to remove the CEMENT!) we sanded everything down and went to bed. in the morning David threw on a coat of primer, We saw a scary sight, there was so many small nicks, chips and scratches all over the kit, after a quick trip down to Supercheap (unfortunatly milsomes was closed) to grab some Spray Putty (read: “Trytocoveritallputty”) and throwing on a decently thick coat of that we managed to fill all the smaller nics etc etc. I spent a decnt hour (or maybe two) sanding a side skirt to perfection, only to find I had used sandpaper too fine (the kit was smoooooth as) one of the locals (read: my auntie) ran down the street to grab some corser paper.. another complete sand,, sand and more sanding we sprayed the kit in putty again to get any of the nics we missed.

So as of this moment we have a Bright BLUE bodykit hanging on some wires. and  two very very tired lovers.

Must go being called to bed.

whoohoo the tassie miners are safe… and they made it onto wikipedia

check out the details here

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beaconsfield_mine_collapse

Who needs journalists?

yep.. lame name just came up with it

anyway heres a screen shot of the concept app

ive had it moving a zippo ligher bottle attached to a floppy drive for 24 hours.. not a single hicup.

now to make hardware and test my algorithim

so far ir works by trying to match the vent output to the desired temp

if its to hot outside it will turn on the ac

if the vent temp is to low verses the cabin temp it floors the fan and maxes the heater

there is some pretty hefty tollerence before that happens of course

im sure when i can be bothered.. ill code some sort of module support in (ugh) so i can just write modules to suit diffrent setups.

but for the mean time i need to get round to making a setup to control the airflow lever.

Im also thinking of using steppers from a printer as they have a bit more punch than the floppies (mind you.. im amazed at how strong they are!)

umm okay.. ill admit.. I got the old theme for WP installed a while ago.. and I never realy even thought about testing it in IE. (I remember the days of designing in IE and testing in netscape 4) so to any of you who were experencing the “text goes waaaaay over to the right” thing… either.. install firefox. or get off my internet.. umm no thats not what i ment.. err sorry

but seriously if your not using firefox.. give it a shot.. tabbed browsing.. and none of these nasty “drive by downloads”(read ad/spyware) that constantly get exploited in IE

yep.. i havent had any sleep.. just wait till i crash.

so using some information off this page.. ive manged to implement a stepper motor function using a floppy drive and my usb controler circut i made a few months back (info here)

now what id like to do is try and find an old 5 1/4 inch drive and i just dont think the 3 1/2 has enough length.. altough with 84 steps to play with.. i think we will be fine.

i could ofcourse probably write a plugin interface to suit different control methods too.. like LPT.. other Vellman cards or maybe even using the FDD port on the motherboard.(that could get messy during system boot if your heater flaps are heavy.. turn off floppy seek!)
this option is just such a cheap and simple way of getting a steppermotor with a controler circut.

atm i can support upto 255 steps using this method without recoding… but it is interesting when i forget to set the MAX limit slider

the only problem i can see at the moment is there is no feedback from the stepper at all.. if it skips a step because the work load is to hard the flap its controling would be slightly in the wrong position.. but the fact we only have a step accuracy of 17 steps in the app (17 degrees 17 steps) makes that irelevant anyway because one step on the motor doesnt even come close to causing a problem. (a few might).. a simple solution to this is to close the app and open it again.. it will execute the maximum number of return steps possible to get the motor back. (unless you specify not to.. my floppy drive automaticly stops steping when its home and just ignores the commands,, even at the other end where it doesnt stop.. it just slips inside the fork)

its also amazing to see these motors can handle so much LOAD.. i honestly thought it wouldnt move a hair.. but it quite happily shuffled my bottle of zippo lighter back and forth..

so ill be looking more into this.. an extremely cheap way to move leavers inside your car.. ill leave the mechanics of that upto you guys..

ohh and heres a video of the software moving the drive..(i know you cant hear wat im saying.. basicly i set it to MAX temprature.. then MIN.. then turn on climate control and tell it to hold 20 degrees with a varying outside temprature) note this is using a usb interface card connected to 2 open collector outputs (green thing behind it)… all you need to be able to do is send earth signals to two wires, and you can send them as slow as you like… but your heater might take longer to move. you can do it with an lpt easy.. i just needa code it (in vb… i dunno never done that)